


The Dull Hobby of a Petty Thief

by danceswithhamsters01



Series: Reddit Prompts 2: Because the old one is quite full [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Busy work, Gen, Pre-Canon, Quiet Hobbies, Sevarra is a little thief, Short, idk why I'm posting this, illuminating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26402041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithhamsters01/pseuds/danceswithhamsters01
Summary: based on a prompt from r/dragonagePrompt 3: Phoenix quills, a lost shoe, musicAs an apprentice, Sevarra Amell had both sticky fingers and a very sedate hobby.
Series: Reddit Prompts 2: Because the old one is quite full [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918846





	The Dull Hobby of a Petty Thief

She smirked to herself as the templar played his lute, the music drifting in from several rooms away. He was like clockwork; he’d play every Sunday evening during his free time. For some reason, he liked the lounge room at the end of the hall best. Perhaps it was the acoustics? Unknowing entertainment while working on her assignments was always welcome. She scurried to one of the desks in the small study room next to the girls’ dormitory.

Looking side to side before setting her bag on the desk, ensuring that she was in fact alone, the apprentice wore a small smirk as she fished around it and pulled out her prize: a pair of phoenix feathers that ranged from earthy brown to rusty orange in a spectrum from bottom to top. One of the enchanters had ordered a great many of them. _Surely the woman wouldn’t miss a pair of them, right?_ At least, that was what Sevarra had told herself when she’d pocketed them when no one was looking. She was fresh from the alchemy lab, where she pretended to work on potions. In reality, it was the one place she could access a sharp tool without arousing suspicion. She admired the freshly carved nubs she’d made on her brand new feather pens.

After filling the empty inkwell that sat on the desk, she dipped one of her new trinkets into the indigo liquid and began carefully transcribing a passage from a tome that had seen far better days. Its pages were fragile and the ink upon them was faded with age. The battered spine read “ _The Four Schools: A Treatise, Volume Two_ ,” by a First Enchanter by the name of Josephus, a fellow who’d lived and died several Ages ago. She’d finished volume one several months ago, which had gone over entropy magic. It had been both an interesting read and a source of renewed frustration over her significant difficulty in channeling spells of that particular school. It was a small source of pride that the copy she’d painstakingly crafted over the course of several months now sat in the Circle’s main library, while the original had been relocated to storage to prevent further wear and tear.

She tapped her sandal-clad toes in time to the music the far-off knight played. She was thankful that it was summertime, and as such, the loss of one of her slippers wasn’t yet a hardship. _Probably someone’s idea of a prank,_ she thought with a huff. It was one of the unspoken rules of the apprentice dorms: lock your stuff away, or someone _will_ eventually walk off with it. Granted, shoes weren’t usually high-theft items. After all, who in the Void would want an already-used set of slippers when a new set could be had simply by asking the Tranquil who ran the stockroom? One could have whatever color they fancied, so long as it was leathery brown.

Time slipped away from the apprentice, losing herself to both the music and the work of illuminating the copy she was in the process of making. The music eventually faded. By the time she pushed herself away from the desk and stood to stretch a complaining back, it had been silent for nearly a quarter-hour. She stood back to admire her work. The margins bore depictions of wintry forests, starry skies, summer-time blooms, mountain tops, along with the sun and the moons. She felt they were fitting to go along with the passage that opened the first chapter of the book. In careful and elegant script, verse five of chapter five of Threnodies read:

_Opposition in all things:_

_For earth, sky_

_For winter, summer_

_For darkness, Light._

_By My will alone is balance sundered_

_And the world given new life._

She knew the First Enchanter had assigned her to transcribe and illuminate these tomes mostly as busywork, but sweet Maker, she actually enjoyed it. While she still heavily resented the Knight-Commander’s ban on apprentices working in the gardens, at least the bastard hadn’t been able to take _every_ single thing she took delight in. The sound of her stomach loudly growling reminded Sevarra that supper time wasn’t that far off. After ensuring that the ink was dry, she hurried off to store her work in the library before hustling off to the kitchens. She’d learned long ago that people who dawdled too long about showing up to meals simply didn’t get to eat.


End file.
